CAIRO: The United States is not highly-regarded in Egypt these days, in fact resentment seems pretty universal—from liberals, conservatives, secular and religious, rich and poor. What is interesting about this growing animosity is that Egyptians have long known America's role in propping up Mubarak's corrupt, repressive regime. But not until the revolution did they seem to begin to publically parse its meaning. This is when American-made canisters of tear gas were smashing into crowds of unarmed protestors and American-manufactured military hardware had turned Cairo's downtown streets into a war zone. During the NGO crisis, when Egyptian authorities charged foreign democracy-promoting NGOs with meddling without a license in the country's political affairs, the US State Department threatened to cut off its billion-dollar aid package to Egypt. Aid would not be restored, the state department announced, until the crisis was resolved and Egypt could show it was making transitioning toward democracy. But recently US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was forced to reverse herself. After all, that $1.3 billion in aid was already sitting on tarmacs, ready to go. Sadly such aid is not slated for badly needed improvements to the country's educational, housing, transportation, or medical infrastructures. Instead it goes to the military in a kind of voucher system to pay for the military training and equipment provided by American companies. In turn, Egypt must adhere to an American-led peace agreement with Israel. Hatred of Israel may come with a mother's milk in the Middle East, but few political leaders in Cairo – whatever their stripe – seem eager to engage militarily. For the US to buy influence like this, can be demeaning, and it's not like Egyptians don't feel it. Egyptian citizens overwhelmingly oppose American aid according to a new Gallup poll released last month—a whopping 82 percent don't want the assistance, a dramatic increase from the 52 percent who opposed American handouts a year ago. For reporters covering last year's ongoing protests in Tahrir Square this resentment was not just expressed by abusive riot police sensitive about media coverage, the protestors too at times erupted with rage. One young man with bloodshot eyes and teargas-powdery hair yelled at me to leave, calling me a “Mossad American spy.” The scary part came next with an instant mob of young men swarming around us to watch and/or join in. They may not all have believed the spy part, but most were angry enough to accept it as a kind of metaphorical truth. Conspiracy theories are a bit of a national pastime, and while crazy, reflect a real paranoia rooted in decades of being jacked around by powerful forces both domestic and foreign. Many of these stories reveal a kind of national anxiety. One corporate lawyer suggested the US was manipulating Egypt's tanking economy in order to better exploit the country's unparalleled natural resources and seize a greater share of its industries. A high-placed military officer claimed the Pentagon, working with Israel, had engineered the overwhelming Islamic parliamentary victory to weaken the country politically, driving it into greater US dependency. The best, (one our Tea Party patriots would love), came from the Christian editor of a news organization whose long-winded tale (conspiracy theories are always complicated) centered on the idea that President Obama (a clear Manchurian candidate) had brought Islamists to power (as he did in other Arab countries) to encourage the formation of a pan-Arab military force led by the Egyptian army (finest military in the world) to challenge and defeat the West. One thing these stories always have in common though, is that the US is perpetually behind whatever goes wrong in Egypt. We are also the go-to bad guys often used to undermine political reputations—at varying times, the army's, the Muslim Brotherhood's, even the credibility of liberal activists, who all have been accused of betraying the country's interests by fraternizing with our “hidden hands.” US military aid to Egypt undermines the country's proud sense of sovereignty as well as the quality of our alliance. Egypt's military brass, which controls as much as 40 percent of the country's economy, doesn't need the handout. If the US truly hopes to improve this relationship it should focus less on making deals with the military and more on how to support the country's imploding economy
